It was devil who introduced me to wonderful bluewater to translate the manual into the German language.

devil was the one who talked me into joining aptosid…

There are ongoing disagreements about the handling of domains and such which is far away from being my business, so i tend to say nothing about that. The only thing i am pretty sure is that there is not a single person to blame for everything… so i didn't mean devil with devils here - i meant everyone as otherwise hell wouldn't be empty but would just miss the boss…

Regarding nvidia: In a way, its mentioned on the homepage: "Using aptosid, with Debian, will give you access to about 30,000 free and open source packages". I don't have an nvidia card, but as far as i understand the fuss (and thats not much i understand) the key point is that it is not open source…

P.S.: The car thing: It was intentional to avoid saying that aptosid is the Porsche. I didn't even said that it is the Fiat as it wasn't related to aptosid in any way. Many people use debian stable and complain about it because they use the wrong distribution (for them), too.

_________________MfG. DonKult
"I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones." ~ The Doctor

clubex

Post subject:Posted: 23.06.2011, 00:13

Joined: 2010-09-11
Posts: 100

Status: Offline

Personally I stay with aptosid because it's based on Debian sid. I and I suspect many others want to be at the bleeding edge while maintaining a fully functioning system.

Where members of these forums seem to differ is in what counts as a functioning system. For example some merely want the basics of a functioning machine (eg. nouveau users) while others want a machine which can handle more demanding tasks (eg. Nvidia users). Other users can cite their own examples of what for them counts as a fully functioning machine.

As we're using Linux there are usually ways of achieving our desires and each of us can have a functioning system according to our own parameters. Unfortunately the aptosid team seems to want to circumscribe what counts as a fully functioning machine and deprecate all others (sometimes in an overzealous manner). This will always cause conflict. Anyone wanting to be a little more adventurous, more demanding or esoteric will of necessity be at odds with the aptosid team.

As I see it the only way for avoiding this conflict is for the team to become less proscriptive or for the adventurous/demanding/esoteric users to move to another distro based on Debian sid. For me the former is clearly more desirable option as another viable Debian sid based distro doesn't exist and if it did could lead to the collapse of aptosid.

DeepDayze

Post subject:Posted: 23.06.2011, 01:57

Joined: 2010-09-11
Posts: 616
Location: USA
Status: Offline

clubex wrote:

Personally I stay with aptosid because it's based on Debian sid. I and I suspect many others want to be at the bleeding edge while maintaining a fully functioning system.

Where members of these forums seem to differ is in what counts as a functioning system. For example some merely want the basics of a functioning machine (eg. nouveau users) while others want a machine which can handle more demanding tasks (eg. Nvidia users). Other users can cite their own examples of what for them counts as a fully functioning machine.

As we're using Linux there are usually ways of achieving our desires and each of us can have a functioning system according to our own parameters. Unfortunately the aptosid team seems to want to circumscribe what counts as a fully functioning machine and deprecate all others (sometimes in an overzealous manner). This will always cause conflict. Anyone wanting to be a little more adventurous, more demanding or esoteric will of necessity be at odds with the aptosid team.

As I see it the only way for avoiding this conflict is for the team to become less proscriptive or for the adventurous/demanding/esoteric users to move to another distro based on Debian sid. For me the former is clearly more desirable option as another viable Debian sid based distro doesn't exist and if it did could lead to the collapse of aptosid.

That's why then the team should encourage the more adventurous people to use the Dragons section to post about their esoteric uses of Aptosid. This can also be a good tool for people to expand their horizons in all things Linux (and Aptosid), but staying within the forum rules

All this drama is so needless and could been avoided if the team is more enlightened and less rigid.

jacmoe

Post subject:Posted: 23.06.2011, 10:21

Joined: 2011-04-13
Posts: 40
Location: Denmark
Status: Offline

Personally, being a graphics programmer, I really don't give a hoot about it being non-free. I just want it.

I must have missed the nVidia issue - can anyone fill me in on that?
What does it mean?

deach

Post subject:Posted: 23.06.2011, 12:57

Joined: 2010-09-18
Posts: 31

Status: Offline

Are all you guys complaining new or something? Nothing has changed for a long time here. Aptosid came from sidux. That's where I came in I know nothing from before that. I've been around since 2007 and the tone of the forums has been this way since day one for me. HOWEVER....I have received help in these forums and on IRC. Aptosid is no different than anything else in life. Either play by their rules or go play somewhere else. Personally.....I tried somewhere else....didn't work. So back here now. Do I like it all, of course not but it's their rules so, I'll play by them.

Regards,
Deach

browe

Post subject:Posted: 23.06.2011, 15:24

Joined: 2010-09-12
Posts: 157
Location: Canada
Status: Offline

I am really disappointed to see devil banned. Even when he decided to leave the team in an official capacity, he has been quite helpful in the forums. The knowledgebase of the people and responsive forums and irc are what drew me to aptosid, and I'm sure that is the case for almost everyone who has installed it. Every time one of these knowledgable people leaves it hurts the project. Admin, please have a close look at your team and policies; for such a project to succeed it must have clear goals and respect its user base.

DeepDayze

Post subject:Posted: 23.06.2011, 15:57

Joined: 2010-09-11
Posts: 616
Location: USA
Status: Offline

browe wrote:

I am really disappointed to see devil banned. Even when he decided to leave the team in an official capacity, he has been quite helpful in the forums. The knowledgebase of the people and responsive forums and irc are what drew me to aptosid, and I'm sure that is the case for almost everyone who has installed it. Every time one of these knowledgable people leaves it hurts the project. Admin, please have a close look at your team and policies; for such a project to succeed it must have clear goals and respect its user base.

I totally agree that the rules need to be revisited and also allow more community involvement in supporting users which will free up developer time to resolve issues as well as in working on releases. The rules as they stand are too rigid, which stifles this distro. Granted that there are certain things that cannot be discussed on here due to the laws of the hosting country, that in itself should not mean the rules are inflexible.

With all the drama lately, there is an urgent need to resolve all the infighting and move on to make Aptosid a well-regarded distro.

Devil's banning is deemed to be the last straw as he's been a strong voice of reason in the developer and userland communities. The last thing we need are more developers leaving the project due to the overly rigid rules plus no clear move to resolve any conflicts by the powers that be.

x-un-i

Post subject:Posted: 23.06.2011, 18:25

Team Member

Joined: 2010-08-26
Posts: 170

Everybody is a bit disappointed. Probably the dev team even more.

For me as *not* a german one that looks like the yearly german summer burlesque.

Just compare the way how the aptosid team (formerly sidux ) has left KANOTIX.

One of the reasons to use sidux/aptosid was the cutting edge sidux/aptosidx is standing for. Latest kernel version is deployed to aptosid. And the latest kernel usually have support for the latest hardware.

My laptop is quite powerful...and I won't use Fluxbox or any other lightweight window managers because I want to use the full power of machine and my nvidia card !

It's unfortunate that the Nvidia driver is not opensourced. However, I can't accept the Nouveau driver as long as this driver is not utilizing the full power of my nvidia graphic card.

That's why I am sticking to the non-free Nvidia driver and I am very grateful to the support and help of towo, absolut and devil for helping me out of some the Nvidia issues I had in the past.

I think we users need a definitive answer whether aptosid's policy is to "dicourage non-free and encourage DFSG" or to support the (highend) users who are using hardware which can only be run with non-free drivers.

If aptosid stands for "dicourage non-free and encourage DFSG" then I am using the wrong distro and I need to switch.

DeepDayze

Post subject:Posted: 23.06.2011, 23:23

Joined: 2010-09-11
Posts: 616
Location: USA
Status: Offline

@Mathias nice post, and I am wondering if the dev team has lost sight of what debian is really all about. Yes its true Debian has not discouraged the use of non-free stuff such as the nvidia/fglrx blobs and firmware. Even though they don't support these things in itself, the Debian team does provide tools to enable users to install and maintain these items.

This thread is a good starting point for an honest dialogue with the aptosid devs and certainly is NOT intended to be a flamefest. All this community desires is more openness and flexibility on the part of the team.

DonKult

Post subject:Posted: 24.06.2011, 00:07

Team Member

Joined: 2010-09-02
Posts: 485

Status: Offline

Mathias wrote:

Debian even support the use of non-free software if there is no other posibility !!

Beside that an opensource driver seems to be available which might not suit YOUR needs, but does for many already and it couldn't be that hard to get the proprietary stuff working anyway. Its just not one-click-install… which is the case for other firmware files, too. Support non-free doesn't mean that you get it served on a silver tablet… Otherwise e.g. debian would serve all firmware packages on the default install iso.

Some people really like the Opera internet browser - but you will never find it in the debian archive as "suitable" opensource replacements exist. Even through these replacements aren't drop-ins or necessarily provide all features and so some people doesn't find it suitable at all.

Beside that my usual comment to this is that at least some team members and users don't even have a nvidia card. I know, its unbelievable, but its really true - i am one of those. So i can't understand the rambling about the end of the world because someone broke the nvidia toy. Nobody hold my hand at the time intel was broken and thats even an opensource driver… And i don't understand why i should wait for updates just because these break some usecases. In the end, this is unstable - if you never break usecases you do nothing at all and can declare yourself stable instead.

Its easy to consider your usecase the only possible one and get quiet upset about it if it breaks and ignore breakage of all others, but at some point you need to decide if you want to give special treatment for a few or handle them all equally. I prefer the not-so 'Animal Farm'-style…

_________________MfG. DonKult
"I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones." ~ The Doctor

jacmoe

Post subject:Posted: 24.06.2011, 00:16

Joined: 2011-04-13
Posts: 40
Location: Denmark
Status: Offline

I don't care what you are using personally.
What I need to know is your official policy.

The reason why Debian does not ship non-free is that it is not free.
It can't be in their shipped distribution.
Due to the license.
That doesn't mean that it is not available.
'suitable' so-called free software are never in the way for desirable non-free software.
It's not a policy of Debian to discourage use of non-free.

This is not about things breaking - we all know what 'unstable' means.
It's about policy.

IMHO, you can do better than create unnecessary drama.

One of the things I value about aptosid is that it is surprisingly stable thanks to the great effort of the aptosid team.
That includes nvidia and the scripts which keeps it working from dist-upgrade to dist-upgrade.
One of the main reasons why I chose to use aptosid is because I need to be using cutting edge software because I am a 3D programmer.
And a distribution which lets me do that without resorting to - as I used to - pollute my system with self-compiled/installed software, obscure PPA's and binary third-party installers..
A distribution - if you can call aptosid that - is a true godsend.
So please don't ruin it.

blackhole

Post subject:Posted: 24.06.2011, 08:00

Joined: 2010-09-12
Posts: 110

Status: Offline

Quote:

Its easy to consider your usecase the only possible one and get quiet upset about it if it breaks and ignore breakage of all others, but at some point you need to decide if you want to give special treatment for a few or handle them all equally

It was not a question of special treatment, it is a question of no treatment at all. Publish for example a new kernel without worrying about the consequences on a lot (maybe the majority) of aptosid users using Nvidia non free was a big mistake. Let's face it: without the help of towo and devil we could not resolve the problems with nvidia in the past. If I remember there was not a real support from official team on this.

slam

Post subject:Posted: 24.06.2011, 08:27

Team Member

Joined: 1970-01-01
Posts: 607
Location: w3
Status: Offline

There has been created a lot of useless drama around the "nvidia-issue", really. When then non-free nvidia blob had it's usual problems with the next kernel subversion recently, and nouveau was in a state we found solid enough to recommend it, the team encouraged Nvidia users to at least test nouveau before further fighting with the blob. Most people understud, and many found out that nouveau was actually sufficent for their needs, while others switched back to nvidia because of the needs of their personal use case. Some people however took our nouveau recommendation very personal, for whatever reason.

Our policy is simple: We share 100% Debian's policy. We do not (and cannot) ship non-free packages, we encourage and support the usage of free packages, but we do not restrict users from using non-free packages, and support and help them with their non-free packages as possible. Our manual is probably the best proof for that. There is no warranty for non-free support, however - and not all team members are willing to touch non-free stuff. Again, the same is true in Debian itself.

However, we are not similiar to Debian in several other regards, after all we had and still have good reasons to do Aptosid. One is the workflow of decision making: We do not poll or vote, instead we try to find consense for every decision inside the Aptosid team. We do not have a "leader", and becoming member of our team is much easier than in Debian.

I think it is time for everyone to relax again, and understand that Aptosid is a purely technical project, and not a political or social one (other distributions might be very different in this regard). Our forums and IRC channels do have one single purpose: Solving techical problems. Personal issues have no place here, they should be cleared between the people involved in private.

Are all you guys complaining new or something? Nothing has changed for a long time here. Aptosid came from sidux. That's where I came in I know nothing from before that. I've been around since 2007 and the tone of the forums has been this way since day one for me. HOWEVER....I have received help in these forums and on IRC. Aptosid is no different than anything else in life. Either play by their rules or go play somewhere else. Personally.....I tried somewhere else....didn't work. So back here now. Do I like it all, of course not but it's their rules so, I'll play by them.